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Charles Sanders Peirce Research Paper

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Charles Sanders Peirce 1839-1914, born in Cambridge, the son of a Harvard University mathematician, was a scientist and philosopher. He is one of the odd people from American philosophy, but he is intriguing. Though he never held any higher academic position he did publish in the Popular Science Monthly (1073). His these is how to go from doubt to belief, and his findings is that the scientific method is the most promising way. Peirce gives that the earliest of science and logic came from the Romans, then from Roger Bacon, “who in the middle of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen’s conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth” (1074), then Bacon gave his book on “Novum Organum, gave his clear account …show more content…

Peirce says. “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief” (1077). He concludes that they both have positive effects on the individual. The end of inquiry: When we doubt we tend to inquire what the truth is and the come to an opinion, whether this opinion is true or not (1077). Methods of fixing belief: Peirce applies four methods for fixing disbelief. The first is the method of tenacity, which is people’s stubbornness to change their minds. They stick to their positions and usually this method is ineffectual for the person to change their mind on their position. The method of authority is a means for fixing belief, as it takes away the focus on the individual, Peirce feels this method is superior “to the method of tenacity” (1079). The method of a priori is, “far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed. Indeed, as long as no better method can be applied, it ought to be followed, since it is then the expression of instinct which must be the ultimate cause of belief in all cases. But its failure has been the most manifest” (1080). Which leads to what he believes id the true conclusion, the method of

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